


The mob within the heart

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas, Conversations, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Gen, Holidays, Ice Skating, Male-Female Friendship, Rom-com
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 00:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8869456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: A soundtrack wouldn't have helped.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annebronterocks](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Annebronterocks).



There was no excuse, not really. If he’d ever paid attention to a romantic comedy in his life, he would have known that what was unfolding before him was a distinct possibility, actually, a probability. Eliza had complained he always fell asleep in the theater unless the movie was designed to be played at 120 decibels, roughly the volume of a rock concert, which narrowed the field to action or the occasional rock concert documentary, both of which he preferred to whatever she chose. She’d learned the best way to get him to do any of the chores on her weekly honey-do list was to turn on the Hallmark Channel’s latest holiday or fake-dating movie. He would do the bathrooms if it was both a holiday and fake-dating movie, so she DVRed those. He hadn’t dated much since the divorce, but he managed to string together a few evenings without having to prop his eyes open during some sentimental feature film with just enough cursing and boobs to earn an R rating, and he’d hired a house-cleaner for his 1 bedroom apartment and paid her $20 more than she’d asked so he wouldn’t feel so guilty about outsourcing the most basic household chores now that there was no longer a reason to flee the TV on Sunday afternoons or the nights he made it home early enough to want to turn it on. 

He hadn’t been seeing anyone for several months. He called it “playing the field” or “waiting for the right person to come along” when people asked, but it wasn’t either of those. He’d ignored every warning sign, red flag, and shrill bell that had come before and during his marriage and he’d resolved not to do that again; he’d been relieved with the end of every relationship since then and was started to think maybe there was such a thing as a confirmed bachelor who wasn’t gay. He got lonely and he missed the idea of a woman but not enough to do very much about it. It wasn’t that hard for him to pick someone up in a bar and have a one-night stand if he wanted to and frankly, work was intellectually engrossing and exhausting in equal measure and he wasn’t 20 and desperate to have sex every day. His brother had gotten married a few years ago and they were on baby #3 now, so his mother had the grandchildren she’d hounded him about and she’d sort of lost interest in his personal life, which was a blessing. She’d spent their last phone call telling him what Ethan and Jack had said and done the last time they visited and about the adorable, lacy layette set she planned to give his sister-in-law Hannah for Christmas. He had known better than to ask how that was a gift for Hannah as an independent human being and not the vessel of his mother’s long-awaited granddaughter but had decide to simply double the Nordstrom giftcard he’d planned to send to Hannah. He hoped she’d spend it all on shoes or an expensive handbag that was not designed to hold diapers, but it was her call. 

He’d at least double-checked with Emma Green that Nordstrom was still considered a top tier department store—he’d carefully prefaced his question with the intention to give Hannah a gift so he was spared her eyeroll at his ignorance. They’d gotten off to a rocky start when he called her a nickname the first time they were in the OR together and he’d been icily corrected with her title. It had taken four months before she’d invited him to call her Emma and so he continued to tread lightly and refrain from discussing her cases unless she brought them up for official consultation. It had been a surprise when she’d invited him to go with her to the department’s winter holiday party, but he’d been planning to go anyway and he was intrigued that she’d asked. Also, she was easy on the eyes and even if he didn’t plan to make a move, which he didn’t, he still liked to look at her and to also know Byron Hale might swallow the tongue he generally let hang out, panting like an overheated Bassett hound after beautiful and aloof Dr. Green, oblivious to the effect it had on his erstwhile paramour, Anne, a prickly radiologist who’d chosen her specialty quite well for its hours, its generous compensation, and its near total lack of contact with living, breathing patients requiring any bedside manner. What she must be like at Byron’s bedside was not worth imagining. 

Emma hadn’t said too much about the outing, other than to ascertain that he actually could skate, and he was trying to take his cue from her, so they hadn’t discussed it much beyond that. Belinda Gibson, the newest member of the department, had spearheaded the party, both entranced with her first New England winter and determined to shake things up in every way she could. Jed had been chafing under Summers’s desultory direction and of the brief Caligulan sovereignty of Clay McBurney, the less said the better, so he’d been ready to go to whatever event Belinda arranged, but he had to agree that ice-skating at the Boston Common Frog Pond was both appealing and just off-the-beaten-path enough to drum up interest from physicians who were bored with another gold and crimson hotel ballroom, passed trays of stuffed mushrooms, and uninspired veal piccata, glossy with butter as if that made up for its other, profound deficits. Jed hadn’t had a drink since he’d quit using anything right after Yale had kindly but firmly said he’d have to find somewhere else to finish if he needed another medical leave for the _treatment_ they all politely referred to in italics; he wouldn’t miss the traditional open bar at the holiday party and he’d heard rumors of a hot chocolate food truck with some vaguely European name. He drank his coffee black but there was something but skating, the holiday season, the white lights in the trees that traced the sky that made the promise of a sweet, rich drink hard to refuse. Emma had actually smiled at him broadly when he mentioned the hot chocolate and he’d used that moment to ask if he could pick her up; taken aback, she’d said yes and he’d scuttled away before she could find a way to say no.

Jed admitted to himself he was looking forward to it—the fresh, cold air on his face, the pull of the blade against the ice, having an excuse to hold a pretty woman’s hand. It was something to think about that wasn’t related to a case, an article, the next conference. He said something like that in the lounge to Mary Phinney, another relative newcomer. He’d been more circumspect with her arrival, Belinda’s protégé who’d been convinced to leave Stanford, and he’d managed a friendly, collegial relationship with her. He’d expected her to be full of herself, having checked her CV (Dartmouth and Hopkins and Stanford, oh my!) out and her list of publications, but she was down-to-earth and had a sharp wit she didn’t reveal widely; he’d only paid attention to her professional history, but he’d swear she was from the Midwest, all sunny neighborliness, ready to lend a hand, the minimal required surgical ego. The nurses genuinely liked her and Sam, the moral compass and general arbiter of all that was good in the department, was a big fan. Jed had been too absorbed with breaking up with Beth to have paid a lot of attention to Mary when she first arrived, but now he more frequently found himself looking at her, across the lounge, in the wards, rarely scrubbed in with her for a trauma case, but every time, it was the look in her eyes that caught him, a bright, inquisitive light that said she loved her work, that she was capable of an intensity she didn’t bother to conceal from anyone who’d make the effort to pay attention, that there was something far more compelling behind her usual calm cheer and modesty. 

If he wasn’t emotionally hibernating, he might have wondered what he could do about it, he had even gone so far as to talk to Sam about her, sort of circularly, and been gently informed by his friend that Mary had brought her boyfriend Henry with her from California, “a nice guy, really, works in non-profit but he has an MBA too—just makes sense with her, when you see them together, it’s like, yeah, of course.” Since then, Jed, who for all his faults had no interest in interfering in someone else’s relationship, had kept things on the surface with Mary, talking about work or general stuff anyone might bring up, the Patriots or whether there’d be enough snow to make a trip to Stowe worthwhile. She always responded in kind but then she’d bring up topics which were a little more personal, an article she’d read in the _Atlantic Monthly_ , an exhibit she wanted to see at The Met if she could get down to New York, what the constant stream of holiday music on the radio reminded her of. Sam had watched them once and lightly slapped him on the shoulder after Mary left to do afternoon rounds with her team, saying, “Man, what the hell? She’s trying to make friends with you. Do you remember how that works? You can be friends with a woman without some big romance, you could maybe help her out or stop hanging out with her every chance you get and then sitting there.” He was lucky it was Sam, because he’d responded, “You think so? You think she likes me?” and his friend had laughed, but not unkindly, then said, “Yeah. That’s what I just said. But don’t even think about asking me if she ‘like-likes’ you. You’re supposed to be an adult, remember?” He’d tried to take that to heart, the assessment and encouragement, and had started talking a little more openly to her. And then the holiday party email went around and Emma startled him with her invitation, something more puzzling to grapple with than trying to get to know Mary better.

When he’d mentioned the party to Mary, she’d made a murmuring sound that was equivocal, so he’d sort of needled her, saying how much Belinda would be counting on seeing her there and how she shouldn’t miss such a typical New England excursion. He might have noticed how she tucked her hair behind her ear while they spoke, but he didn’t, not at the time, and he’d asked, as Emma had asked him, if she could skate. She’d been absorbed with something else, but she had looked at him and said, “Yeah, I did some skating as a kid,” and he’d decided to be jocularly reassuring, saying how it was like riding a bicycle, it would all come back to her, there was a skate rental so she should just make sure to come and not to worry about falling. If they’d been better friends, he would have added “on your ass” but they weren’t and it sounded crude inside his head to he’d just laughed a little into the pause. She’d smiled and agreed and then pushed some pathology reports in front of him and asked what he made of them. They’d had a lively conversation and she’d ended up texting him a link to an article she’d just read and he’d more or less forgotten about the party, other than that she’d said she’d probably go.

Now, of course, he was faced with what he should have been intelligent enough to see bearing down on him like a fucking tractor trailer, like an armada of tractor trailers, but which he’d ignored, even as he’d seen her on a bench getting her skates on; they were scuffed and grey at the toe but the blades were shone in the last of the sunlight and the laces were the red of a holly berry. He’d gestured at the skate rental and said, “Should you have slipped them some cash for a better pair?” and beside him, Emma had given Mary a little universal woman shrug at his inept teasing and general uncouthness but Mary only furrowed her brow a little and said, “Yeah, these are mine. I guess they’ve seen better days. You guys go on, I’ll be out in a few minutes.” Emma tugged at his coat sleeve then and he followed her out onto the ice, where the cold and the need for concentration made conversation irrelevant. He’d remembered being better at skating, but it had been a solid 15 years since he’d really done it and he felt the tightness in his legs, the extra effort it took to maintain his balance and match Emma, who seemed perfectly comfortable. He’d wondered if she’d be wearing a little fur-trimmed skating costume and was secretly disappointed that she was all in black except for a tartan scarf. It was like skating with a holiday ninja and her entire attitude dashed any faint expectations about the possibility of a romance budding between them. He sensed he was boring her with his basic loops around the ice, but he wasn’t up to much more and she graciously deposited him on the sidelines after the fourth loop, suggesting he relax and come back out when Sam arrived. He’d exerted himself enough to unzip his jacket and shuck off his gloves, contemplating unlacing the skates even as he knew it would be almost impossible to put them back on and it was early to start in on the hot chocolate, when he heard applause. 

He’d thought it must be one of the residents he didn’t know well, certainly not Squivers, but perhaps Fairfax, and decided to leave the skates on. When he looked up, he understood instantly why people had clapped; Mary was skating, very fast and very skillfully, so much so that it seemed like that was the natural state of a human being, and then she started doing jumps. He watched the Winter Olympics and spoke as portentously as the next guy along with the announcers about triple axels and lutzes and salchows, but he honestly couldn’t have identified any of them while Mary skated. He only knew she was seriously good, her expression, when he could catch sight of her, focused and satisfied, the flash of her smile when she landed a particularly complex jump, a curious bliss at the end of a spin. The clapping became more frequent and louder as she skated and that seemed to wake her up in a way; after she landed from her last jump, she sailed around the ice in a way that always reminded him of a swan, and then timed it so she could step off as the music swelled to “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and the crowd became a little rowdier, singing along, jolly and merry and every holiday word for glad that got trotted out once a year.

“You did some skating as a kid, huh?” he said as she sat down next to him. Her cheeks were bright pink and her dark hair was pinned up or braided, the way she wore it when she operated, mostly hidden by a clearly hand-knit red hat that matched her laces and clashed with the duller burgundy of her parka.

“It’s not untrue,” she said lightly. “Perhaps not entirely accurate, but who is, about their past?”

“Most people want to gloss over youthful indiscretions or forget about some stupidity, not Olympic caliber skating prowess,” he retorted, grinning to make sure she wouldn’t misunderstand him.

“I didn’t make the cut. Not for the team,” she said and he laughed.

“Christ, Mary! I thought I was sort of graciously exaggerating. You really are **that** good.”

“Not anymore, not since med school. And I always preferred ice hockey anyway,” she remarked.

“Now I’m just wondering what other revelation is going to emerge,” he said, shifting a little, trying to move his feet inside the skates which were too tightly laced to allow it, properly so, but his feet still hurt.

“I can’t guess all your assumptions about me, but I will say, you can lay off the ‘welcome to New England’ stuff—I was born in Manchester and I grew up there. My parents still live in the same old Cape Cod I grew up in,” she replied. She had very lovely dark eyes and none of Emma’s aloofness, though he felt there were boundaries he hadn’t approached but which he might not cross with her.

“And you, you’re taking a break already?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Weak ankles,” he said, stretching his legs out. “Not what they used to be.”

“Weak. Ankles. Seriously, is it 1912? Do you have the vapors? What about all your skating and skiing stories?” she said.

“I didn’t say I was spending every weekend doing that stuff, just that I had. I did. Plus, my limitations meant I got a chance to watch you. I liked that, better than skating myself, I liked watching you be so fucking good at it, pardon my French,” he said.

“Well, thank you. It felt a little self-indulgent, a little show-offy but I couldn’t resist,” she said. “It’s been so busy, since I, we got back, I haven’t had time for anything like this.”

It was a relief to hear her say it, actually. That the pace she kept, her surgery and clinic schedules, teaching, the paper she was in the middle of, that it was taxing and that she really was a human being. There was a story about her reaming out someone in hospital collections over the phone, but no flying scalpels of F-bombs and he’d wondered sometimes, what it took, how she was made to keep it all going.

“Is your…Henry here? Is he coming?” he asked, unsure how exactly to refer to the man she reportedly lived with. Sam had said boyfriend, but it could be fiancé or even husband. Mary, like the majority of women surgeons he knew, didn’t wear any rings and so there were no clues he could go on, no honking big diamond solitaire or narrow platinum band.

“No. I don’t think so, no. It’s been…it’s not going well, he’s not happy, I don’t think he’d come to this,” she said, the words halting. She sounded uncertain, unhappy herself, all her bright giddiness from skating dissipated.

“I think he wants to move back to California, it’s not working here,” she added.

“Oh,” he said. He had to say something, an acknowledgement, but he felt lost and hesitant, unwilling to utter some banal platitude.

“He’s such a good person and I love him, I know he’s so unhappy but…There shouldn’t be a but, you know? That should be enough and I don’t know why, but it’s not. Not anymore, I know what’s right but I don’t seem to want to do it,” she said, staring at the rink where people were giddy and laughing, a world apart from where they sat on the bench.

“What do you want?” he asked, safe enough, he thought, since she’d brought it up.

“I want to stay. I love the hospital, my work, I love being back on the East Coast, I hadn’t thought I would so much but I do. I want Henry to be happy though but I guess I’m selfish, I don’t want to do what it takes to make him happy, happier, when I won’t be,” she explained. It was amazing really—this was the most personal conversation they’d ever had, hell, it might be the most personal conversation he’d ever had with a woman and he couldn’t help wonder why, couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“Mary, why are you telling me all this?”

“I guess, I thought you’d understand,” she said slowly. “Maybe. Maybe I was wrong, forget it.”

“No. I guess I do. Loving someone, the way you want, the way they want to be loved—it’s not always the same thing,” he said, remembering Eliza, the blank frustration on her face so many times that he’d known covered disappointment and confusion, that he hadn’t bothered to do anything about.

“I didn’t think I could feel like this, I thought if I was in love with someone, it would be easy to put them first, that would make me happier than anything else, but it’s not. I think, I don’t know how, but I think I must not love him enough, not the right way,” she said. Jed heard, woven through the sadness and her struggle with it, the sapping sense of failure; she felt she’d failed Henry but also herself, an idea she had of who she was, would be, that he recognized. 

“Let’s just say, I know more about this than you, the heart has its own integrity and you, we all, have to accept that. You’re still the same good person even if you don’t want to do something you feel you ought to. You’re allowed to not just change your mind, you’re allowed to be mistaken about yourself without being wrong,” he said. Had he ever articulated it that clearly to himself? What was it about her that let him see things, say things like this, when just a few minutes ago he’d been teasing her and looking for Emma’s slender, dark figure on the ice?

“It’s so strange—I feel like I know what I’m doing at work, it’s the right place for a million reasons, I can’t even say, but not at home and it’s never been that way, I never would have expected that…I haven’t been able to say any of this to him and I haven’t wanted to pay attention to what that means, because I do care about him,” she said. 

“Mary, if you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be this…distressed. Sometimes things just change, we change, the world changes around us and things fit differently,” he replied. He felt the impulse to lay a hand on her shoulder or forearm, some physical consolation and then, again, that insistent spike of interest that felt even more misplaced now and yet, somehow, just a little more acceptable. “Maybe you’re due for a hot chocolate, too. It’s been a long day, a long week.”

“How about we go out for a spin first? I bet I can help you with those weak ankles and the hot chocolate will taste better after a little physical exertion,” she said, more at ease though he couldn’t bit quite sure why. What an odd experience, to look at her dark eyes and see such vulnerability, trust that he didn’t think he’d earned but which she’d granted him, her ambivalence about her relationship and to feel both jealous of Henry Hopkins and sorry for him all at once, to want to be closer to Mary knowing she had already given him so much. She wanted to skate, with him, and after that conversation, he was inclined to say yes to anything she asked of him.

“You were warned,” he said and stood up, stiffer than he ought to be, and then thought _Pushing forty, better get used to it_. She was more graceful though it was nothing to how she was on the ice, adjusting her pace to his, taking his gloved hand in her own when she picked up speed. She wasn’t challenging herself now with spins and leaps, this was just flight, or as close as they could get, and he felt a surge of physical joy in it and then shock as another skater got too close, an elbow ready to catch him and send him sprawling, except that Mary suddenly pulled him to her, her arm tight around his waist, slowing them so that they stumbled into a wall instead of toppling to the ice. 

“He was about to murder you there, sorry. Jerk! Didn’t even check. You okay?” she said, her arm still around him, pressed against him with her face raised up to him like a white flower, an embrace neither of them acknowledged but which they also did not hurry to end. This was what he’d worried about after Sam told him about her, this moment he’d sensed ahead of him, when he couldn’t be kept from falling in love with her and he couldn’t help but look to see if she saw it too, what her eyes held. Questions—that was what he saw and the delicate black fan her lashes made when she dropped her eyes, the vermilion border of her lips, the puff of breath as she spoke.

“Yeah, I’m okay. But I’m ready for that hot drink now and I reserve the right to complain bitterly about a charley-horse on Monday. And limping, prepare yourself for that too, I’m a master at limping,” he said, striving to cover what he wasn’t ready for her to have to address, hoping she would leave it alone for now.

“Gotcha. We can walk over, very leisurely, and I’ll help you get your skates off if you need,” she said. “Wouldn’t do to have you taking a tumble, Dr. Foster, iced.”

Sam knew, or he knew enough, when they got there, when Mary had whipped cream on her upper lip and Jed was careful not to touch her at all; he said, under his breath, “Sorry, man. Maybe you were right, before,” and Jed raised an eyebrow. Of course, the savvy best friend would know, he would have seen that coming too if he’d ever paid attention to what the world was screaming at him. He decided it might be wise to watch a little TV over the weekend and prepare himself for what could come next.

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a sweet, funny story about Jed underestimating Mary's ice-skating like every romantic comedy ever made would have it go and then Annebronterocks made a comment about wanting a modern AU with Mary/Henry dealing with Jed and/or Emma and I decided to portmanteau/smash the ideas together, so you all got this. I tried to make some allusions to well-known lines/scenes in the show while meandering around in this universe where Mary and Henry are a couple, albeit not happily together. There's some mystery as to why Emma asked Jed to go and then virtually abandons him and thus, room for a sequel I imagine, though I have no particular plan for one.
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson. I tried to do my due diligence on making Boston, etc accurate. For background, I imagine Jed is around 38 and Mary is more like 33-34-- in my head, she is a pediatric surgery attending who started college at 17, got an MPH right after, then did 5 years general surgery at Hopkins and a 2 year pedi surgery fellowship at Stanford, where she met Belinda. Jed is a general surgeon as are Hale and Sam and Emma.


End file.
